My immediate question here is why hydrogen combustion was chosen over the use of a hydrogen fuel cell with an electric motor. Is it a weight problem similar to battery electric? I'm just wondering because if you're already bringing the hydrogen with you, why not use a fuel cell and get the extra efficiency? Cost? Weight?
@@matthewmalaker477 They are looking into hydrogen fuel cell as well as battery electric technologies, this hydrogen combustion is one tech demonstration among several
@@matthewmalaker477 Fluid propulsion doesnt allow for regenerative braking, so a more efficient engine is better than a fuel cell or series hybrid setup. Electric propulsion on fluids will only take over when we finally eliminate input conversion (plug-in batteries).
@@EngineeringExplainedhey mate , do you remember the guy who could do the chalk board and make it skip for dotted lines 😂 I went straight out and got our board and started to do the lines 😂
The perfect marine application for hydrogen is a pontoon boat, use the tanks as the toons so no hull space is wasted. Hitting something could be quite a show.
I've always thought those would be great for battery power. The top could be a giant solar panel. Most people just cruise in toons, they aren't going 70mph.
I would like to see the tradeoffs they're considering with this vs hydrogen fuel cells. I would think the latter has quite a few advantages over this, including efficiency and noise, but maybe those are harder to manufacture?
Yeah, fuel cell definitely would increase range - as discussed, this is looking at what could be applied with minimal changes to their existing engines.
@@EngineeringExplained Perhaps you could do a followup video? Range isn't even the thing I wonder about with a fuel cell, but rather if there are practical issues why one would avoid using a fuel cell in this case. Price? Sensitive equipment? Degradation?
You'd need a pretty sizable fuel cell to produce the same power as a 5 L combustion engine. And since fuel cells use precious metal catalysts, that does mean a significant price tag and probably weight as well. 1 hp = 750 W, so to produce the roughly 350 hp of a 5.6 L v8, you'd need 260 kW of electrical power. That's about 2 Toyota Mirai's worth.
Fuel cells are exceptionally expensive. To minimize cost they could do the same as the Mirai: use a battery to accommodate peak power, and scale down the fuel cell to meet only the average power consumption. It’s still something like $500k of fuel cell though.
@@markmuir7338 I don't think the intermediate battery trick would help much here. While cars need high peak power to get up to speed and then low power to cruise (which the fuel cell would provide), boats tend to need high power continuously, so you would still need a huge fuel cell
Hydrogen is the worst possible combustion engine fuel. Its not dense enough to be viable for transport and it can't be made without consuming more energy than we get from burning it or cracking it from hydrocarbons.
Couldn't agree more, anyone with a basic physics understanding should know how bad of an idea hydrogen is for fuel for anything other than fusion. Also, when you get a more advanced understanding of Hydrogen and its interactions, you get things like hydrogen embrittlement, it's just an overall bad time. This is just a marketing stunt.
Something else you can do to boost the efficiency of the combustion: water injection. In "The Hydrogen World View" by Dr Roger E. Billings, he talks extensively about how hydrogen combustion, burning with a very-high temperature, resulted in significant NOx emissions. To combat this, they injected water into the intake stream which cooled the valves and piston crown (also reducing the probability of backfiring and knocking; direct-injection was much less common back in the 1970s) and also putting an effective lid on the temperatures in the cylinder, quashing the NOx emissions. It also boosted the fuel economy by over 10%. Many World War II-era fighters planes also did water injection, allowing them to go past "100% power" settings for brief periods of time. They frequently had to mix a certain amount of ethanol into the water to keep it from freezing at high altitudes (which frequently have sub-freezing temperatures) but the ethanol content was low enough that it had minimal effect on the performance; it was the water which did the really heavy lifting on that. Hmm. Offshore fishing boat. Engine which produces a lot of heat. Wonder where they could come up with some purified (maybe even distilled) water?
Fluid propulsion doesnt allow for regenerative braking, so a more efficient engine is better than a fuel cell or series hybrid setup. Electric propulsion on fluids will only take over when we finally eliminate input conversion (plug-in batteries).
The big problem is where do you fuel up the boat? There is very little hydrogen infrastructure and even less (if any) where you could bring a boat to (short of trailering the boat).
Maybe Electrolysis from the salt water itself? from an alternator? idk how you'd incorporate that. Maybe have a sail assist for fuel eco, which could spin an electrolysis generator, while the engine idles, that filters and feeds directly into the H tank. Probably a swiss-cheese-like list of holes in that idea tho, so idk!
The Japanese has spent bilions and decades on their hydrogen engine for cars and failed miserably; but these geniuses at Yamaha decides to one up them with boat motors? Having a few benefits tends to not weigh out for the thousands of down sides. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should.
Decades? Japanese? i think you're confused, hydrogen fuel cells have been developed since 1839 in Switzerland, and hydrogen combustion studied since 1920s in Germany.
"If you have a problem with one tank, you can isolate it with valves".... That's REALLY funny... Yeah, providing that the problem tank hasn't already exploded and blown the boat into a billion bits. 10,000 PSI? That's crazy to think that the containment of those tanks can be considered 'safe' for public use.
out of all the options i still believe synthetic fuel is the way to go with basically the same things as current fuel goes and no major change required to be done on current engine and infrastructure
Hydrogen electric should be the future. Such vehicles would have superior range to combustion vehicles. The bonus is that we can use hydrogen infrastructure to also create synthetic gasoline for existing and future combustion vehicles.
and it still releases carbon into the atmosphere where it causes great damage. We really need to think about not burning anything if we can help it, and for the most part we can.
If is used autogenous pressure to drive the direct injection system the fuel system runs empty at some pressure over 100bar , is like leaving a 1/6 of the tank full
1:55 While it's true that it has no emission during combustion, the same can't be said for production on hydrogen plants. Producing hydrogen has a co2 footprint associated with it, abeit some sources points to be half as much as other sources like gas (talking about the whole chain of production, transportation and consumption).
I would be interested in knowing how many times you can cycle the tanks from 100 bar to 700 bar before you have to replace them. This seems even more important as the tank expands and contracts as it is cycled. I wouldn't want a catastrophic failure in a 700 bar tank.
As someone who works on stuff like this everyday as an automotive engineer, I am very skeptical that hydrogen will ever work for anything in the future. The storage issues alone are enough to make it unfeasible. People already have range anxiety with EVs that get 400 miles to a charge. Good luck getting them to accept 50. Also, EVs still have the huge efficiency advantage that a combustion engine will NEVER overcome, as it is physically impossible to match the efficiency of an equivalent electric motor. That's thermal dynamics folks. Plus, as several have said below, as battery tech continues to improve, range anxiety will go away. All the grid worries are nothing but BS from fossil fuel producers our grid is more than equipped to handle it and growing everyday (with the exception of maybe Texas, but they are about to join the national grid). AI is poised to strain electricity demand far more than vehicles in the next decade.
So oil is the most energy packed fuel substance we know of. Currently our grid most certainly can not handle the proposed increased use. Just this year there were a couple of occasions were they had rolling brown outs and told people not to charge their cars. As side note saying battery tech will get better is not a point, you also simply say hydrogen power will get better too.
Lol buddy, you got some catching up to do. Hydrogen cars already exist. Available from major manufacturers like Toyota and Hyundai. Storage is not a problem, and to the extent that it is, it’s no reason not to invest in hydrogen. We have carbon fiber tanks. Look up metal hydrides. They’re like a sponge that holds hydrogen at low pressure. Hydrogen cars have even MUCH more range than even combustion vehicles. Again, this is already reality. I don’t know why anyone ever talks about efficiency when battery vehicles have less range than my 20 year old Corolla and take ten times as long to recharge. That is not efficiency, and that is all that matters. No, grid inadequacies are not big oil propoganda. It is already a real problem. You really don’t know what you’re talking about. Battery vehicles are mediocre and inferior. If we make the effort to invest in hydrogen infrastructure, such vehicles would be vastly superior than anything else, and we can use hydrogen for far more applications.
@bowencreer3922 well said sir. If the time and energy being put into battery EV nonsense was put into hydrogen solutions, things would be going in a better direction. I imagine a time in the future where we are on a hydrogen infrastructure, and car companies can offer commuters in a hydrogen fuel cell/electric system, and then a "sports" car using hydrogen internal combustion. So that way us guys that love the sound and feel of IC can still enjoy it, yet there are options for super efficient EV commuters. Kind of like how the market is with gasoline cars currently.
The biggest take away is how energy intense traditional boating is. 2mpg translates into roughly ~16kwh/mile meanwhile the electric semis out there are getting ~2kwh/mile while hauling a full load. Roughly 8 times more energy to move a small boat versus a loaded semi
Another issue could be that any tank defined as high pressure, and I forget the bottom number, requires a hydro test every 5 years. That would be expensive on these tanks, I would imagine.
The next 5-7 years as we march closer to 500 wh/kg mass production battery cells - this hydrogen concept becomes less relevant. The volumetric increase to cells will offset the weight penalty and improve packaging and give the 90+% electric motor efficiency a leg up even further. Neat video explaining the bigger picture issues to hydrogen - I recently got to see our test locomotive we have at my tier 1 railroad I work at and the tank sizes and stacks in that engine are stunning to the say the least. There testing this locomotive for local switch jobs along with a BESS / BEV locomotive solution paired with it (hybrid). Good stuff - but even the engineers working on this project mentioned that once batteries eclipse the volumetric requirements it may just change there path entirely. interesting decade ahead of us!
Great video. I’ve always thought hybrid-hydrogen engine. 1L turbo diesel acting as a generator. Electricity from the generator goes to defuse h2o into 2 different tanks (h2 & o). From those tanks both can be injected back into the hydrogen engine. Since you are in a boat, you might have an infinite amount of fuel.
Let’s use DME instead of…. working pressure 6-10 bar . LPG infrastructure, ch3Och3 ( no carbon-carbon bonds , hydrogen carrier) . Comparing to pure hydrogen - super cheap and easy scalable
Outside rockets and maybe certain high-speed aircraft applications there seem to be very few cases where hydrogen combution is really desirable over fuel cells. I guess it's kind of cool to see these engineering demonstrations, but I really do wonder why they aren't focusing on the more efficient and promissing technology.
Is liquified hydrogen storage that challenging? Surely that would be better than relying on 700bar tanks. Have a collector from the liquid tank to catch evaporation, use that for injection
Hey Jason. Cool video, and it's got me thinking... You briefly hit on the stoichiometric air to fuel ratio being a factor potentially holding back the peak power of a Hydrogen engine, and I was wondering how that might be different if the engine was using pure oxygen instead of air. Obviously that would introduce other engineering challenges, but still I think it's an interesting idea. Taking it one step further, I wonder how difficult it is to actually separate oxygen/nitrogen from air. After a little research, I found that there are membrane separators that seem to work on a sufficient scale, but it was hard to track down any hard data on the power (pressure) required and the flow rates achievable. Lastly, if the math is even relatively favorable, I think it would be really cool to see if you could attach one of these nitrogen separators to a super/turbocharger in an ICE engine and see if it is possible to achieve any efficiency/power/emissions gains using such a setup. Love the channel. Stay frosty.
You would actually only need about 300 kWh of battery storage to achieve the same range as the hydrogen solution. If you want hydrogen so badly, why not use a fuel cell, that would increase the range to 150 miles easily with the same storage tanks.
Couldn’t you simply make the hull a design that creates integrated baffled tanks? As in the hull is the tank? Think of ballast tanks. I know the pressures involved are the challenge here, but there has to be a way to create a hollow honeycomb style design that will be structurally sound for a hull and a tank in one piece.
Can you imagine the water pressure at 23000 feet down in the ocean? (Me neither!) That's the water pressure equivalent of the 700bar in those tanks. Twice the depth of the Titanic.
I get doing this just for testing purposes. But burning the H2 is sooo inefficient, which they of course know, so we'll see how much they spend on this one vs the fuel cell version. Still have the same H2 storage issues, but at least you get more out of each pound of H2.
Although hydrogen cars seem pretty dead on arrival, I could see a bit more feasibility with boats, especially large ones. I wonder if the range improves dramatically as you consider boats with much larger abilities to store H2
They already exist. From major manufacturers like Toyota and Hyundai. If we just made a little investment in hydrogen infrastructure, we could use it for everything, and have an endless supply of it.
How does the BSFC change on hydrogen though? I would assume its much better than a gasoline engine given the properties of using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. This would improve range, albeit not by a substantial amount.
In theory it has a slightly higher efficiency potential, but not massive. In practice it's tough to get it competitive currently, as there are challenges with hydrogen having such a low ignition energy (pre-ignition is a difficult challenge).
Think using liquid hydrogen would be a better option but with automatic purging. My concern would be leaks because that will happen and hydrogen doesn’t smell so you would never know it.
From a logistics perspective, hydrogen power is a nightmare. Recharging the hydrogen tanks is going to be as much of a problem, if not worse, than charging an EV. I'm all about new technology, and it has to start somewhere, though I think petroleum is here to stay for a while. On another note, < 20% of a barrel of crude is used to produce fuel. Our lives are full of materials and items made from the rest of the barrel of crude. Where will those items come from if we turn to alternative energy sources.
As long as the majority of hydrogen (over 90%) is produced from methane reforming, there is a CO2 penalty (more CO2 per energy unit using hydrogen vs direct burning the methane)
Yep, def needs to come from clean sources if it's going to have a meaningful impact. There is a massive green hydrogen plant going up in Georgia, interesting project!
Is there a way to make a tiny water to hydrogen generator that feeds into the tank or injection line somehow? Ah nevermind, hydrogen conversion is power intensive
Another reason I'm a Yamaha or die guy.🤠R6 for life. ...also that's a floating explosion and doesn't make sense for a variety of reasons. Cool factor/ R&D goldmine.
I think hybrid motors are still the way to go. The energy density of gas, the efficiency of electric. The engine is strictly used as a generator (similar to an electric train) and is not connected to the drive train at all. They can be pretty efficient if optimized at a certain rpm range for an application like this. Maybe some way to capture the energy lost to heat and also use it to generate more electricity to improve the efficiency even more.
The efficiency gains from a hybrid drive are very much related to the application and a road vehicle or train are applications where it makes sense - the vast majority of the time the required power is much less than 10% of the peak power and peak power is used less than 1% of the time. A marine application is very different in this application the power output is essentially always over 50% and here you typically design the vessel to have an optimal cruising speed that you typically aim to always operate at. In this application a hybrid drive adds zero value. Boats applications actually operate a conventional ICE engine much more effectively than in a road vehicle application - this might seem counter intuitive when you hear of fuel efficiency figures like 2 miles per gallon, but this is actually a reflection on just the enormous amount of energy needed to move a planning hull boat through the water - the ICE engine itself is way more efficient under these conditions than when it is operated in a road vehicle and operating on average at less than 10% output
Why not ammonia? When liquefied it has 1.5x the hydrogen content of liquid hydrogen at only -33°C and can be easily catalytically decomposed into a combustable hydrogen/ammonia mixture.
Do you get more energy out of it, than the amount of energy required to convert it to hydrogen? This step almost never works out, especially in small transportation applications.
Ammonia is an option, but amonia is quite toxic in the air and also to marine life. So leaks can be an issue. There is a reason why more refrigurators moved away from amonia to hydrocarbons, even though ammonia generally the more efficient refrigurant. Nor sure if one really needs an extra decomposition stage, it may even burn directly. Ideally one would use a fuel cell and get about 3-4 x the useful energy compared to a combustion engine. So far I don't know of fuel cells that can directly use ammonia however.
@UlrichHarms-ci1ov the decomposition is because ammonia needs a bit of a kick before it can combust completely. Normally in the research this is achieved either by an ammonia/LPG mix or by an ammonia/hydrogen mix. The decomposition also allows fuel cell use. Regarding toxicity I get the concern but it would be a good application for a fleet vessel like cargo where the company ensures regular maintenance compared to a private fishing boat. Also considering most run on diesel already, the environment of the combustion in the engine is already very appropriate to use ammonia as a dual fuel. I mentioned it for this project seeing as it's a proof of concept type of vessel.
@@EngineeringExplained the hydrogen part of the mixture is only a small amount because ammonia doesn't readily ignite. So you only need enough hydrogen to initiate. The decomposition of ammonia to hydrogen and nitrogen in the presence of a catalyst, while endothermic has a very low energy barrier to the point where it's considered reversible in atmospheric conditions. That is why the Haber process requires high pressures in order to force the equilibrium to the ammonia side where the number of moles is half. Another (more practical) way to kickstart the combustion of ammonia is to mix it with a hydrocarbon gas like LPG or use it in a diesel multifuel but at that point it's no longer carbon neutral.
This just feels like a dying gasp from Yamaha. They could have just run the numbers and known it wouldn’t work. I’m not a fan of electric but at least there’s the possibility of a tech break through. Hydrogen’s physical properties aren’t changing. We just can’t afford 26 foot boats with 450 hp anymore. Of course Yami makes all their money from these huge engines.
Still hoping that liquid hydrogen + fuel cell + electric motors will be feasible one day. I wonder if we could build a tank strong enough to store liquid hydrogen without cooling.
Why not a hydrogen fuel cell powered motor instead of a combustion engine and a solar hydrogen producer to make some extra hydrogen to just lower how much you need to buy to run it
A regular gasoline engine can run on H2, anyway considering electric motors are more efficient I'd have thought PEM fuel cells would be the route to explore/invest in?
All the leaking gas is easy to deal with. My old 50 year old boat has passive vents that work while under way by scooping fresh air in and another port vacuuming it out. On start up there are electric blowers that force air into the fuel storage area and around the engine to keep the fumes away.
So, if this engine uses compressed hydrogen gas to pressurize the fuel instead of any fuel pumps, how can it pressurize gas into the cylinder in a long run. Because, according to PV=nRT , fuel that is being used the pressure inside the tank decreases and pressure must be decreased accordingly.
How much energy does it take to extract hydrogen from water? Given this is a boat, would it be feasible to refuel from the water you're in as you're traveling? Certainly, there would be energy loss, but could such a mechanism extend the range at all? Or would it not be worth it?
I do have to wonder though. If the only thing going in is hydrogen, and we say the only thing coming out is water, that's great. But what about the air that is used in that combustion? With a Nitrogen rich atmosphere, do we not get any NOx emissions from the combustion?
Would heating the tank when approaching 100 psi work to increase the pressure or just not worth the energy needed to heat the tank Also safety but it is not because something can be dangerous that it cannot be mitigated
I live next to a Toyota Mega Dealer with a Hydrogen station, but am loathe to lease a Mirai. I can home charge a buddy’s Model Y at 6+ kWh/hr, my ICE Toyotas have had such low TCO, that the PHEV is the closest thing I might go with.
I'm sure Toyota will be along soon to announce their hydrogen fuel-cell boat... At least that would have decent range and much lower maintenance (one of the biggest expenses in boating) than this design.
okay but what about hydrogen fuel cells rather than an ICE. i get ICE for enthusiasts cars trying to keep the engine alive but something like this i feel like a hydrogen fuel cell would be more efficient.
It's almost as if for all these applications and all the people talking about it they alwyas seem to forget about the process required to make the hydrogen fuel.
So are we going to ignore the nitrous monoxide emissions here? Carbon dioxide gets used by plants through photosynthesis and gives us Oxygen, nothing will take care of the Nitrous Monoxide which again is much more toxic than Carbon Dioxide and can become lethal. what exactly are we trading here? less power, more weight, more space needed, more emissions, more danger of explosion, worse infrastructure. just because the exhaust makes H2O?
Is hydrogen water? If so, can't you use the ocean water to refill the hydrogen? Like somehow, get the ocean water, clean it, filter it, and everything else, then convert it into hydrogen? If this is possible, you can have unlimited fuel. I dont know maybe these is impossible. But I watched a video somewhere some Japanese scientists invented rechargeable/interchangeable hydrogen cells that portable.
Hello Why not instal modern sails on cargo ships to help the engine and reduce fuel consumption and emisions ? For thousands of years we are using them.
![เปิดคำทำนาย นอสตราดามุส - บาบา วานก้า ปี 2025 คนทั่วโลกต้องเจออะไรบ้าง? | แฉ 11 ธ.ค. 67 [2/3] |GMM25](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xmTIKWJUMPM/mqdefault.jpg)
We are happy to work with you on this collaborative effort! Excited to see where it goes from here!
My immediate question here is why hydrogen combustion was chosen over the use of a hydrogen fuel cell with an electric motor. Is it a weight problem similar to battery electric? I'm just wondering because if you're already bringing the hydrogen with you, why not use a fuel cell and get the extra efficiency? Cost? Weight?
@@matthewmalaker477 Brother, you're talking to someone who runs the social media account, not the engineers who invented the engine.
About 47 miles apparently.
@@matthewmalaker477 They are looking into hydrogen fuel cell as well as battery electric technologies, this hydrogen combustion is one tech demonstration among several
@@matthewmalaker477 Fluid propulsion doesnt allow for regenerative braking, so a more efficient engine is better than a fuel cell or series hybrid setup. Electric propulsion on fluids will only take over when we finally eliminate input conversion (plug-in batteries).
It's incredible what this man can do with a whitebord and a few markers
Haha, appreciate it!
Whiteboard... 😍🤤
@@EngineeringExplainedhey mate , do you remember the guy who could do the chalk board and make it skip for dotted lines 😂 I went straight out and got our board and started to do the lines 😂
The perfect marine application for hydrogen is a pontoon boat, use the tanks as the toons so no hull space is wasted. Hitting something could be quite a show.
MV Kaboomz
Toon tanks has a nice ring to it!
I completly agree. They should send it to Ukraine for testing in the Red sea. Specially the last part at night.
I've always thought those would be great for battery power. The top could be a giant solar panel. Most people just cruise in toons, they aren't going 70mph.
Call it the H-bomb. Sorted.
I would like to see the tradeoffs they're considering with this vs hydrogen fuel cells. I would think the latter has quite a few advantages over this, including efficiency and noise, but maybe those are harder to manufacture?
Yeah, fuel cell definitely would increase range - as discussed, this is looking at what could be applied with minimal changes to their existing engines.
@@EngineeringExplained Perhaps you could do a followup video? Range isn't even the thing I wonder about with a fuel cell, but rather if there are practical issues why one would avoid using a fuel cell in this case. Price? Sensitive equipment? Degradation?
You'd need a pretty sizable fuel cell to produce the same power as a 5 L combustion engine. And since fuel cells use precious metal catalysts, that does mean a significant price tag and probably weight as well. 1 hp = 750 W, so to produce the roughly 350 hp of a 5.6 L v8, you'd need 260 kW of electrical power. That's about 2 Toyota Mirai's worth.
Fuel cells are exceptionally expensive. To minimize cost they could do the same as the Mirai: use a battery to accommodate peak power, and scale down the fuel cell to meet only the average power consumption. It’s still something like $500k of fuel cell though.
@@markmuir7338 I don't think the intermediate battery trick would help much here. While cars need high peak power to get up to speed and then low power to cruise (which the fuel cell would provide), boats tend to need high power continuously, so you would still need a huge fuel cell
Hydrogen is the worst possible combustion engine fuel. Its not dense enough to be viable for transport and it can't be made without consuming more energy than we get from burning it or cracking it from hydrocarbons.
Couldn't agree more, anyone with a basic physics understanding should know how bad of an idea hydrogen is for fuel for anything other than fusion.
Also, when you get a more advanced understanding of Hydrogen and its interactions, you get things like hydrogen embrittlement, it's just an overall bad time. This is just a marketing stunt.
And it still produces NOX. What marina sells hydrogen?
@@Flies2FLLit produces a miniscule amount of NOX, but yeah i doubt it would be feasible to use green hydrogen as a fuel source anytime soon
@@B0F A "minuscule" amount? The atmosphere is 78% nitrogen. What do you think happens when combustion takes place? NOX....
true, especially since hidrogen fuel cell exists but for some reason people insist on it going "vroom vroom" 🙄
That's actually amazing! If you'd put a fuel cell and a battery on board, you could even produce the hydrogen from sea water!
Something else you can do to boost the efficiency of the combustion: water injection.
In "The Hydrogen World View" by Dr Roger E. Billings, he talks extensively about how hydrogen combustion, burning with a very-high temperature, resulted in significant NOx emissions. To combat this, they injected water into the intake stream which cooled the valves and piston crown (also reducing the probability of backfiring and knocking; direct-injection was much less common back in the 1970s) and also putting an effective lid on the temperatures in the cylinder, quashing the NOx emissions. It also boosted the fuel economy by over 10%.
Many World War II-era fighters planes also did water injection, allowing them to go past "100% power" settings for brief periods of time. They frequently had to mix a certain amount of ethanol into the water to keep it from freezing at high altitudes (which frequently have sub-freezing temperatures) but the ethanol content was low enough that it had minimal effect on the performance; it was the water which did the really heavy lifting on that.
Hmm. Offshore fishing boat. Engine which produces a lot of heat. Wonder where they could come up with some purified (maybe even distilled) water?
Fluid propulsion doesnt allow for regenerative braking, so a more efficient engine is better than a fuel cell or series hybrid setup. Electric propulsion on fluids will only take over when we finally eliminate input conversion (plug-in batteries).
The big problem is where do you fuel up the boat? There is very little hydrogen infrastructure and even less (if any) where you could bring a boat to (short of trailering the boat).
Maybe Electrolysis from the salt water itself? from an alternator? idk how you'd incorporate that. Maybe have a sail assist for fuel eco, which could spin an electrolysis generator, while the engine idles, that filters and feeds directly into the H tank. Probably a swiss-cheese-like list of holes in that idea tho, so idk!
The Japanese has spent bilions and decades on their hydrogen engine for cars and failed miserably; but these
geniuses at Yamaha decides to one up them with boat motors?
Having a few benefits tends to not weigh out for the thousands of down sides.
Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should.
Decades? Japanese? i think you're confused, hydrogen fuel cells have been developed since 1839 in Switzerland, and hydrogen combustion studied since 1920s in Germany.
"If you have a problem with one tank, you can isolate it with valves".... That's REALLY funny... Yeah, providing that the problem tank hasn't already exploded and blown the boat into a billion bits. 10,000 PSI? That's crazy to think that the containment of those tanks can be considered 'safe' for public use.
out of all the options i still believe synthetic fuel is the way to go with basically the same things as current fuel goes and no major change required to be done on current engine and infrastructure
Yep, only real issue with it is cost (and scaling production to our level of use, also a matter of cost).
Hydrogen electric should be the future. Such vehicles would have superior range to combustion vehicles. The bonus is that we can use hydrogen infrastructure to also create synthetic gasoline for existing and future combustion vehicles.
@@EngineeringExplainedthat is easier to overcome than somehow packing more hydrogen in a given volume/weight
and it still releases carbon into the atmosphere where it causes great damage. We really need to think about not burning anything if we can help it, and for the most part we can.
@@bowencreer3922; I'll be honest, I just want engine noises.
Beyond the video: in summary, synfuels are the way to go
Semi truck uses about 9 bars in tyres.
100 bars explosions will be something.
I hope they reinforce the tanks.
I used to work with these tanks a lot. They make a BIG boom. As you would imagine though, they are incredibly sturdy.
700 Bar ......😬
Normal SCUBA tanks are 300 Bar... so an order of magnitude higher than that...🤔🔥
We do way more than that with HPA PCP airguns. 3000 - 4500 is the norm. AEA now has a compressor that will do 7000 psi.
If is used autogenous pressure to drive the direct injection system the fuel system runs empty at some pressure over 100bar , is like leaving a 1/6 of the tank full
Correct, discussed this in the video!
1:55 While it's true that it has no emission during combustion, the same can't be said for production on hydrogen plants. Producing hydrogen has a co2 footprint associated with it, abeit some sources points to be half as much as other sources like gas (talking about the whole chain of production, transportation and consumption).
Thanks Jason. I'm no engineer, but I always look forward to your whiteboard analyses.
if you mix the hydrogen with oxygen you get it in liquid form at room temp and you get extra oxygen in the combustion chamber
I would be interested in knowing how many times you can cycle the tanks from 100 bar to 700 bar before you have to replace them. This seems even more important as the tank expands and contracts as it is cycled. I wouldn't want a catastrophic failure in a 700 bar tank.
Good thing we don't have to worry about corrosion on the high pressure tubing and fittings in a boat...
As someone who works on stuff like this everyday as an automotive engineer, I am very skeptical that hydrogen will ever work for anything in the future. The storage issues alone are enough to make it unfeasible. People already have range anxiety with EVs that get 400 miles to a charge. Good luck getting them to accept 50. Also, EVs still have the huge efficiency advantage that a combustion engine will NEVER overcome, as it is physically impossible to match the efficiency of an equivalent electric motor. That's thermal dynamics folks. Plus, as several have said below, as battery tech continues to improve, range anxiety will go away. All the grid worries are nothing but BS from fossil fuel producers our grid is more than equipped to handle it and growing everyday (with the exception of maybe Texas, but they are about to join the national grid). AI is poised to strain electricity demand far more than vehicles in the next decade.
So oil is the most energy packed fuel substance we know of. Currently our grid most certainly can not handle the proposed increased use. Just this year there were a couple of occasions were they had rolling brown outs and told people not to charge their cars. As side note saying battery tech will get better is not a point, you also simply say hydrogen power will get better too.
20 year old Honda Insight enters the chat...
Lol buddy, you got some catching up to do. Hydrogen cars already exist. Available from major manufacturers like Toyota and Hyundai. Storage is not a problem, and to the extent that it is, it’s no reason not to invest in hydrogen. We have carbon fiber tanks. Look up metal hydrides. They’re like a sponge that holds hydrogen at low pressure. Hydrogen cars have even MUCH more range than even combustion vehicles. Again, this is already reality. I don’t know why anyone ever talks about efficiency when battery vehicles have less range than my 20 year old Corolla and take ten times as long to recharge. That is not efficiency, and that is all that matters. No, grid inadequacies are not big oil propoganda. It is already a real problem. You really don’t know what you’re talking about. Battery vehicles are mediocre and inferior. If we make the effort to invest in hydrogen infrastructure, such vehicles would be vastly superior than anything else, and we can use hydrogen for far more applications.
Automotive engineer my ass, no way an engineer has vocab skills bad enough to use "except" instead of "accept." I'd bet $100 you're a technician.
@bowencreer3922 well said sir. If the time and energy being put into battery EV nonsense was put into hydrogen solutions, things would be going in a better direction.
I imagine a time in the future where we are on a hydrogen infrastructure, and car companies can offer commuters in a hydrogen fuel cell/electric system, and then a "sports" car using hydrogen internal combustion. So that way us guys that love the sound and feel of IC can still enjoy it, yet there are options for super efficient EV commuters. Kind of like how the market is with gasoline cars currently.
The biggest take away is how energy intense traditional boating is. 2mpg translates into roughly ~16kwh/mile meanwhile the electric semis out there are getting ~2kwh/mile while hauling a full load. Roughly 8 times more energy to move a small boat versus a loaded semi
ADHD is a hell of a drug
That's probably why most of us are here! ...... Oh look, a Squirrel!.....
aren't we all so fricking special ey
This is great, ford of all companies tried this little over 20 years ago on a super car. Really cool idea and the car looked beautiful.
Thank you! I am pleased to see more of your videos. Keep ‘em coming.
Dude, always love your videos. The math is excellent to get the point across. This was a really fun one!
Excellent presentation. Thank you. I guess the sailboat crowd gets the last laugh on this one.
Oh this is exciting.
Another issue could be that any tank defined as high pressure, and I forget the bottom number, requires a hydro test every 5 years. That would be expensive on these tanks, I would imagine.
How would refueling work?
Shut-off valve closes off the low pressure regulator, then you simply fill all three tanks simultaneously. You can see the fill port in the animation.
The next 5-7 years as we march closer to 500 wh/kg mass production battery cells - this hydrogen concept becomes less relevant. The volumetric increase to cells will offset the weight penalty and improve packaging and give the 90+% electric motor efficiency a leg up even further.
Neat video explaining the bigger picture issues to hydrogen - I recently got to see our test locomotive we have at my tier 1 railroad I work at and the tank sizes and stacks in that engine are stunning to the say the least. There testing this locomotive for local switch jobs along with a BESS / BEV locomotive solution paired with it (hybrid). Good stuff - but even the engineers working on this project mentioned that once batteries eclipse the volumetric requirements it may just change there path entirely. interesting decade ahead of us!
100%
This is great for marketing. Buy a gasoline Yamaha outboard today and don't wait on hydrogen one.
Great video. I’ve always thought hybrid-hydrogen engine. 1L turbo diesel acting as a generator. Electricity from the generator goes to defuse h2o into 2 different tanks (h2 & o). From those tanks both can be injected back into the hydrogen engine. Since you are in a boat, you might have an infinite amount of fuel.
With that pressure it mudt have serious effective compression ratio
Let’s use DME instead of…. working pressure 6-10 bar . LPG infrastructure, ch3Och3 ( no carbon-carbon bonds , hydrogen carrier) . Comparing to pure hydrogen - super cheap and easy scalable
Outside rockets and maybe certain high-speed aircraft applications there seem to be very few cases where hydrogen combution is really desirable over fuel cells. I guess it's kind of cool to see these engineering demonstrations, but I really do wonder why they aren't focusing on the more efficient and promissing technology.
Glad to see you excyover a hydrogen engine.
Is liquified hydrogen storage that challenging? Surely that would be better than relying on 700bar tanks. Have a collector from the liquid tank to catch evaporation, use that for injection
Hey Jason. Cool video, and it's got me thinking... You briefly hit on the stoichiometric air to fuel ratio being a factor potentially holding back the peak power of a Hydrogen engine, and I was wondering how that might be different if the engine was using pure oxygen instead of air. Obviously that would introduce other engineering challenges, but still I think it's an interesting idea.
Taking it one step further, I wonder how difficult it is to actually separate oxygen/nitrogen from air. After a little research, I found that there are membrane separators that seem to work on a sufficient scale, but it was hard to track down any hard data on the power (pressure) required and the flow rates achievable.
Lastly, if the math is even relatively favorable, I think it would be really cool to see if you could attach one of these nitrogen separators to a super/turbocharger in an ICE engine and see if it is possible to achieve any efficiency/power/emissions gains using such a setup.
Love the channel. Stay frosty.
I don't see this taking off with all these challenges to overcome. What we need is solid state batteries to finally come to fruition.
And some nuclear fusion to go with it.
You would actually only need about 300 kWh of battery storage to achieve the same range as the hydrogen solution. If you want hydrogen so badly, why not use a fuel cell, that would increase the range to 150 miles easily with the same storage tanks.
Couldn’t you simply make the hull a design that creates integrated baffled tanks? As in the hull is the tank? Think of ballast tanks. I know the pressures involved are the challenge here, but there has to be a way to create a hollow honeycomb style design that will be structurally sound for a hull and a tank in one piece.
Can you imagine the water pressure at 23000 feet down in the ocean? (Me neither!) That's the water pressure equivalent of the 700bar in those tanks. Twice the depth of the Titanic.
The gap tolerances must be extremely tight to keep the H2 where it's needed
I get doing this just for testing purposes. But burning the H2 is sooo inefficient, which they of course know, so we'll see how much they spend on this one vs the fuel cell version. Still have the same H2 storage issues, but at least you get more out of each pound of H2.
My favourite mechanical engineering teacher from 2013 ❤😊
Although hydrogen cars seem pretty dead on arrival, I could see a bit more feasibility with boats, especially large ones. I wonder if the range improves dramatically as you consider boats with much larger abilities to store H2
They already exist. From major manufacturers like Toyota and Hyundai. If we just made a little investment in hydrogen infrastructure, we could use it for everything, and have an endless supply of it.
How are they managing the steering? It looks like the fuel lines are rigid, and I would assume that flex-hose will leak Hydrogen...🤔
How about a big baloon, that's historically very safe.
Oh No thank you… KA-BOOM !
How does the BSFC change on hydrogen though? I would assume its much better than a gasoline engine given the properties of using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. This would improve range, albeit not by a substantial amount.
In theory it has a slightly higher efficiency potential, but not massive. In practice it's tough to get it competitive currently, as there are challenges with hydrogen having such a low ignition energy (pre-ignition is a difficult challenge).
Think using liquid hydrogen would be a better option but with automatic purging. My concern would be leaks because that will happen and hydrogen doesn’t smell so you would never know it.
How this is not gonna go boom boom in an accident?
I don't think getting 700 bar H2 for such a short range is gonna be anything close to "cheap"
So cool!
If hydrogen could replace diesel on barges that would actually be a good use case for it
From a logistics perspective, hydrogen power is a nightmare. Recharging the hydrogen tanks is going to be as much of a problem, if not worse, than charging an EV. I'm all about new technology, and it has to start somewhere, though I think petroleum is here to stay for a while. On another note, < 20% of a barrel of crude is used to produce fuel. Our lives are full of materials and items made from the rest of the barrel of crude. Where will those items come from if we turn to alternative energy sources.
As long as the majority of hydrogen (over 90%) is produced from methane reforming, there is a CO2 penalty (more CO2 per energy unit using hydrogen vs direct burning the methane)
Yep, def needs to come from clean sources if it's going to have a meaningful impact. There is a massive green hydrogen plant going up in Georgia, interesting project!
Is there a way to make a tiny water to hydrogen generator that feeds into the tank or injection line somehow?
Ah nevermind, hydrogen conversion is power intensive
I want F1 to force this on the whole grid. The older fans seem to think gas V10s are still a good suggestion😮💨
What will be the range be with fuel cell and electric outboard ?
8:06... since the gallons and mpg you used each had 3 significant digits, should your range have been 208?
No petrol getting in the water is a big plus. Lithium doesn't make sense outside of a diesel generator unit on a massive ship.
Another reason I'm a Yamaha or die guy.🤠R6 for life. ...also that's a floating explosion and doesn't make sense for a variety of reasons. Cool factor/ R&D goldmine.
How do you get the hydrogen though? crude oil reformation?
What I want to know is what pressure does the hydrogen have to be for a kg to fit in a gallon
I think hybrid motors are still the way to go. The energy density of gas, the efficiency of electric. The engine is strictly used as a generator (similar to an electric train) and is not connected to the drive train at all. They can be pretty efficient if optimized at a certain rpm range for an application like this. Maybe some way to capture the energy lost to heat and also use it to generate more electricity to improve the efficiency even more.
The efficiency gains from a hybrid drive are very much related to the application and a road vehicle or train are applications where it makes sense - the vast majority of the time the required power is much less than 10% of the peak power and peak power is used less than 1% of the time. A marine application is very different in this application the power output is essentially always over 50% and here you typically design the vessel to have an optimal cruising speed that you typically aim to always operate at. In this application a hybrid drive adds zero value. Boats applications actually operate a conventional ICE engine much more effectively than in a road vehicle application - this might seem counter intuitive when you hear of fuel efficiency figures like 2 miles per gallon, but this is actually a reflection on just the enormous amount of energy needed to move a planning hull boat through the water - the ICE engine itself is way more efficient under these conditions than when it is operated in a road vehicle and operating on average at less than 10% output
reminds me of that fairbairn skit
Why not ammonia? When liquefied it has 1.5x the hydrogen content of liquid hydrogen at only -33°C and can be easily catalytically decomposed into a combustable hydrogen/ammonia mixture.
Do you get more energy out of it, than the amount of energy required to convert it to hydrogen? This step almost never works out, especially in small transportation applications.
Ammonia is an option, but amonia is quite toxic in the air and also to marine life. So leaks can be an issue. There is a reason why more refrigurators moved away from amonia to hydrocarbons, even though ammonia generally the more efficient refrigurant. Nor sure if one really needs an extra decomposition stage, it may even burn directly. Ideally one would use a fuel cell and get about 3-4 x the useful energy compared to a combustion engine. So far I don't know of fuel cells that can directly use ammonia however.
Hydrogen is massively explosive : instant death. Ammonia is deadly toxic : slow miserable lung dissolving death. Conclusion hydrogen is better.
@UlrichHarms-ci1ov the decomposition is because ammonia needs a bit of a kick before it can combust completely. Normally in the research this is achieved either by an ammonia/LPG mix or by an ammonia/hydrogen mix. The decomposition also allows fuel cell use.
Regarding toxicity I get the concern but it would be a good application for a fleet vessel like cargo where the company ensures regular maintenance compared to a private fishing boat. Also considering most run on diesel already, the environment of the combustion in the engine is already very appropriate to use ammonia as a dual fuel. I mentioned it for this project seeing as it's a proof of concept type of vessel.
@@EngineeringExplained the hydrogen part of the mixture is only a small amount because ammonia doesn't readily ignite. So you only need enough hydrogen to initiate. The decomposition of ammonia to hydrogen and nitrogen in the presence of a catalyst, while endothermic has a very low energy barrier to the point where it's considered reversible in atmospheric conditions. That is why the Haber process requires high pressures in order to force the equilibrium to the ammonia side where the number of moles is half.
Another (more practical) way to kickstart the combustion of ammonia is to mix it with a hydrocarbon gas like LPG or use it in a diesel multifuel but at that point it's no longer carbon neutral.
Interesting concept and great explanation as always, but i dont see a way how this will ever be practical with combustion
Remember that Keanu Reeves movie "Chain Reaction"? 💀
JK, this seems like a cool technology, I hope it becomes popular.
so how safe are tanks with 700 bars of highly explosive gas?
There are production cars running around with these tanks (see Toyota Mirai, as an example). They're quite robust tanks.
This just feels like a dying gasp from Yamaha. They could have just run the numbers and known it wouldn’t work. I’m not a fan of electric but at least there’s the possibility of a tech break through. Hydrogen’s physical properties aren’t changing. We just can’t afford 26 foot boats with 450 hp anymore. Of course Yami makes all their money from these huge engines.
Fuel Cell? Increase efficiency with those other optimizations
Still hoping that liquid hydrogen + fuel cell + electric motors will be feasible one day. I wonder if we could build a tank strong enough to store liquid hydrogen without cooling.
toyota did something like that. the tank is still HUGE
Hydrogen combustion! Awesome🫡
lol
Why not a hydrogen fuel cell powered motor instead of a combustion engine and a solar hydrogen producer to make some extra hydrogen to just lower how much you need to buy to run it
A regular gasoline engine can run on H2, anyway considering electric motors are more efficient I'd have thought PEM fuel cells would be the route to explore/invest in?
All the leaking gas is easy to deal with. My old 50 year old boat has passive vents that work while under way by scooping fresh air in and another port vacuuming it out. On start up there are electric blowers that force air into the fuel storage area and around the engine to keep the fumes away.
So, if this engine uses compressed hydrogen gas to pressurize the fuel instead of any fuel pumps, how can it pressurize gas into the cylinder in a long run. Because, according to PV=nRT , fuel that is being used the pressure inside the tank decreases and pressure must be decreased accordingly.
Can’t wait for all my friends and family to send me a non-engineering video on this saying something like “see told you hydrogen was the answer”
I’ll just keep my 115 SHO!
Every video on your channel is a little work of art. I look forward to the new episodes!♥️🏚🌸
Kinda crazy these are the same people that make Pianos.
Are you forgetting the fact Mazda had the Hydrogen Rotary engine
That was not an outboard motor; there are numerous examples for automotive use.
How much energy does it take to extract hydrogen from water? Given this is a boat, would it be feasible to refuel from the water you're in as you're traveling? Certainly, there would be energy loss, but could such a mechanism extend the range at all? Or would it not be worth it?
I do have to wonder though. If the only thing going in is hydrogen, and we say the only thing coming out is water, that's great. But what about the air that is used in that combustion? With a Nitrogen rich atmosphere, do we not get any NOx emissions from the combustion?
See whiteboard in the first section - yes, NOx is a part of the emissions, though there are strategies to minimize.
Imagine floating on your fuel 😂
Would heating the tank when approaching 100 psi work to increase the pressure or just not worth the energy needed to heat the tank
Also safety but it is not because something can be dangerous that it cannot be mitigated
What marina can you get h2?
Chicken and egg for sure - what boat can you buy that's powered by hydrogen combustion? (doesn't exist either).
We can somewhat map this issue to hydrogen cars. We have the cars available. Where's the fuel?
I live next to a Toyota Mega Dealer with a Hydrogen station, but am loathe to lease a Mirai.
I can home charge a buddy’s Model Y at 6+ kWh/hr, my ICE Toyotas have had such low TCO, that the PHEV is the closest thing I might go with.
I'm sure Toyota will be along soon to announce their hydrogen fuel-cell boat... At least that would have decent range and much lower maintenance (one of the biggest expenses in boating) than this design.
okay but what about hydrogen fuel cells rather than an ICE. i get ICE for enthusiasts cars trying to keep the engine alive but something like this i feel like a hydrogen fuel cell would be more efficient.
10K PSI!??? You don't need a motor. Just a little hole in the back the pressure will push you along just fine.
It's almost as if for all these applications and all the people talking about it they alwyas seem to forget about the process required to make the hydrogen fuel.
So are we going to ignore the nitrous monoxide emissions here? Carbon dioxide gets used by plants through photosynthesis and gives us Oxygen, nothing will take care of the Nitrous Monoxide which again is much more toxic than Carbon Dioxide and can become lethal. what exactly are we trading here? less power, more weight, more space needed, more emissions, more danger of explosion, worse infrastructure. just because the exhaust makes H2O?
i dont get why they havent combined those tanks with a fuel cell instead the engine. does this motor load shift THAT often
Who is getting the heebie-jeebies at the thought of sitting on three tanks of pressurized hydrogen?
stoixiometric is stee-hee-o-metric. There is no "o" in there.
“We do these things because they are hard.”
Is hydrogen water? If so, can't you use the ocean water to refill the hydrogen? Like somehow, get the ocean water, clean it, filter it, and everything else, then convert it into hydrogen? If this is possible, you can have unlimited fuel. I dont know maybe these is impossible. But I watched a video somewhere some Japanese scientists invented rechargeable/interchangeable hydrogen cells that portable.
Hello
Why not instal modern sails on cargo ships to help the engine and reduce fuel consumption and emisions ?
For thousands of years we are using them.